About Our Barangay

Barangay San Agustin is one of the fourteen barangays of Iba, the capital town of Zambales, and home to 6,301 residents as of the 2020 census — roughly one in every nine Ibanians. It lies about seven kilometres northwest of the town centre along the national highway, making it the municipality’s gateway from the north. It is Iba’s northernmost barangay: it adjoins Barangay Amungan to the south, the Palauig barangays of Bulawen, Salaza, and Liozon to the north, and reaches eastward across the Zambales Mountains to the boundary of Barangay Maamot in San Jose, Tarlac. From the lowland plain along the highway, barely a dozen metres above sea level, the land rises toward the foothills of the mountain range that walls the province’s east.

San Agustin is a young and fast-growing community. The 2015 census counted an average household of more than four members and a median age of under twenty-five — a barangay of growing families, students, farmers, small entrepreneurs, and workers who commute to the capital town. Classified as a rural barangay of Iba, it is organized into puroks and governed by an elected Punong Barangay and Sangguniang Barangay, with this website serving as its official channel for services, announcements, and transparency.

Mission

To deliver honest, efficient, and compassionate public service to every resident of San Agustin — keeping the peace through the Katarungang Pambarangay, promoting health, education, livelihood, and the welfare of women, children, senior citizens, and persons with disabilities, protecting our environment, and making every barangay transaction transparent, accessible, and fair, in partnership with an empowered community.

Vision

A peaceful, progressive, and God-centered Barangay San Agustin: a united community of healthy, empowered families living in a safe and ecologically balanced environment, with sustainable livelihoods and a responsive, transparent barangay government — a proud contributor to Iba’s growth as the heart of Zambales.

History

Our barangay carries the name of Saint Augustine of Hippo — the same saint to whom Iba’s centuries-old cathedral is dedicated. Iba was founded in 1611 by Augustinian Recollect missionaries led by Fr. Rodrigo de San Miguel as the village of Paynauen, and the settlement moved from place to place before taking permanent root along the banks of the Bancal River, where a fort was raised against the pirates who harried the coast; in 1860 the town’s administration passed to the Dominican priests. The area’s first people were the Zambals, later joined by Tagalog and Ilocano migrants whose intermingled customs shaped communities like San Agustin. The barangay’s name is a living inheritance of that Augustinian beginning.

Modern records tell the story of steady growth. From 3,239 residents in 1990, San Agustin nearly doubled to 6,301 by 2020, growing at about 2.5 percent a year in the latest census period — among the fastest-growing communities in the capital town. Today the barangay continues that story: bringing its services online so that every resident, from the highway to the foothills, can reach their barangay government with ease.